12 Aug 2000 AUSTRALIA:
Setting the wildcat among the pigeons.
By AMANDA HODGE.
Thousands are convinced wild pumas are roaming the bush. Amanda Hodge looks at the evidence "YOU'RE in cat country here," retired hunter Geoff Green says ominously as he holds up what was once the leg of a sheep. Twelve months ago, the retired professional game hunter collected the freshly killed remains from the border of his property.
The bones were neatly gnawed, the body incised from head to tail and the pelt licked clean of blood and flesh. This, Green knew, was not the work of a wild dog - a less discerning eater with sloppy table manners. "Dogs tend to leave wool and fur everywhere and they eat standing up," he says. "When cats kill a sheep there's no meat or wool spread anywhere. They bone them out, you know ... just leave a real neat heap like it's been skun by a man."
Green, a quietly spoken local landowner, is one of a growing band of people who believe there are colonies of pumas, panthers and leopards roaming the Victorian bush. The most popular theory as to how the big cats came to be there, is that World War II US fighter pilots carried not only puma insignia on their uniforms but also live puma cubs around Australia.
Other suggestions involve skint circus men, careless wildlife collectors and circus train crashes. Victorian professor of education John Henry has heard them all. As team leader of a Deakin University study 25 years ago into the existence of pumas in the Grampians, he came across more than his share of big cat believers. But that wasn't all he encountered.
Over two years, many dropping specimens and plaster-cast footprints later, two finds set the environmental science students buzzing. Both the scat specimens, complete with bones, fur and fibre, and a plaster cast of a footprint were sent to a US puma specialist in Colorado. The biologist wrote back in careful language - both specimens were consistent in appearance and make-up with what you would expect to find from a puma. "It was tantalising but not conclusive in a scientific sense," says Professor Henry. More evidence was required, so he went searching for primary sources. According to the theory, US airforce pilots flying in from a defeated Singapore flew mascots to the South Australian town of Mount Gambier, where several squadrons were regrouping in early 1942. When Japan threatened Australia's north coast, they were called up and told to get rid of the big cats - which they did at Victoria Point in the Grampians.
Professor Henry tracked down six of the servicemen and wrote to them. He confirmed they had served in Australia during 1942 and spent time in Mt Gambier before being dispatched to the north coast. He also confirmed that both a local US fighter squadron and US bomber squadron bore depictions of pumas on their uniform insignia. "All of that was consistent with the myth," Professor Henry says. "But when I finally took the plunge and asked them, `Did you ever bring out puma cubs as mascots?', the walls came up." A few letters, including one from a retired lieutenant-colonel, admitted not only knowledge of such stories but also that that they might be true.
Still, the team could not conclusively declare the presence of pumas in the Grampians. Instead their unofficial report concluded that there was evidence of "large carnivores other than wild dogs". The Deakin report remains more conclusive than the thousands of reported sightings of exotic cats reported since the 1870s. It is certainly more convincing than the blurred video footage aired on television last week. But the report was never published. The spectre of public and peer ridicule proved too intimidating - so much so that another academic involved in the project refused to talk to The Australian about the findings or allow his name to be mentioned.
The study remains a well-kept secret. In its absence, the new video footage has failed to convince officials in Victoria's Department of Natural Resources. Department spokesman Peter Menkhorst says the most logical explanation is that the black cat filmed was a feral cat. "We remain sceptical of the exotic cat theory until field evidence comes along rather than hearsay of sightings," Menkhorst says. But the witnesses are adamant, including a Victorian farmer who swears he found a three-month-old Hereford calf hanging 5m up in the fork of a tree. "People who haven't seen it are non-believers," says John McPhailand, a rabbiter from Daylesford. "I don't suffer from hallucinations.
I've seen it and I know others who have too." Green is not among them. He has never sighted a big cat, but he is convinced of their existence. His neighbour has lost more than 300 sheep in recent years, all killed and skinned in the same manner. He has made plaster casts of footprints he is convinced are not those of wild dogs or feral cats. Like many other believers who have been ridiculed for speaking out, there is an element of zealotry in Green's research.
In the dining room of his 140-year-old farmhouse, he produces reams of information and statements from former police officers, park rangers and farmers. Testimonials include descriptions of a "huge lioness-like animal" and a "bloody great big black cat", bigger than a sheepdog or labrador. Some are convinced that what they have seen is a thylacoleo carnifex, a tree-dwelling marsupial lion which has been extinct for 18,000 years.
Green is still making up his mind. Meanwhile, the sheep bone hangs in his shed, a pointed reminder that the truth is out there.
© Copyright AYR
Australian Yowie Research - Data Base
www.yowiehunters.com